1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a heat dissipation structure. More particularly, the present invention relates to a heat dissipation structure applied in an interface card.
2. Description of Related Art
Nowadays, portable computers, either the notebook computers or the tablet computers, are all developing towards lighter, thinner and smaller designs. However, this trend causes the inner space of the portable computer to become narrower and leads to increased integration level of its inner parts. When the portable computer is operating, the inner electronic components that can generate heat, such as the central processing unit and the video-graphic chip, will produce a lot of heat, so the narrow inner space of the portable computer will worsen the heat dissipation in the computer. Once the heat generated by the inner parts of the portable computer can not be successfully dissipated outside, the inner temperature will surely increase, and when the temperature increases beyond the critical point that the inner parts can endure, the overheat shut-down will occur. Therefore, the heat dissipation is an important factor that has to be taken into account in portable computer designs.
In order to update the hardware components of the portable computer, in the conventional technology, a modularized interface card is usually mounted inside the portable computer via a card slot. Among others, the mini-PCI interface is a common interface card specification applied to the portable computer. According to the function to be updated from the interface card, the interface card usually has more than one heat-generating electronic component thereon. However, with the progresses of the IC design and fabrication process, the heat-generating power of the electronic components on the interface card becomes increasingly higher. Therefore, the heat dissipation issue of the electronic components on the interface card has to be solved.
FIG. 1 is a top view of a conventional heat dissipation structure coupled to an interface card, and FIG. 2 is a side view of FIG. 1. Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, an interface card 100 (e.g. a mini-PCI interface card) includes a wired board 110 having a plug region 112 that can be plugged into a corresponding slot in a portable computer. Moreover, the interface card 100 further comprises multiple heat-generating electronic components 120, all of which are arranged on a unilateral surface 110a of the wired board 110. However, when the heat-generating electronic components 120 are operating, such an arrangement will cause the heat to accumulate on the unilateral surface 110a of the wired board 110 having the heat-generating electronic components 120.
Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, in order to provide a solution of the heat dissipation problem of the interface card 100, in the conventional technology, a heat dissipation structure 200 is directly fixed above the surface 110a of the wired board 110 of the interface card 100. The heat dissipation structure 200 comprises a flat heat conduction portion 210, wherein the heat conduction portion 210 has a plurality of connection leads 214 fixed on the unilateral surface 110a of the wired board 110 by the surface mount technology (SMT). Moreover, the heat conduction portion 210 further has a plurality of contact leads 212 which are joined onto the surfaces of the heat-generating electronic components 120. Therefore, the thermal energy generated by each heat-generating electronic component 120 will be conducted to the heat conduction portion 210 via the plane contact leads 212 in contact with respective electronic components 120, and will be dissipated to the surroundings via heat convection. However, the conventional heat dissipation structure applied to the interface card has at least the following disadvantages,
1. The layout of the conventional technology, in which the heat-generating electronic components are incorporated with a unilateral surface of the heat dissipation structure, causes the heat source to excessively gather on the unilateral surface of the wired board of the interface card, such that the heat generated by the heat-generating electronic components can not be rapidly guided outside via the heat dissipation structure, therefore lowering the heat dissipation performance of the interface card.
2. The heat dissipation efficiency of the heat dissipation structure according to conventional technology is poor, so the interface card may fail due to the overheating of the heat-generating electronic components on the wired board of the interface card.
3. Since the heat dissipation of the interface card is not efficient in the conventional technology, the housing temperature of the portable computer increases, and accordingly, hot spots occur on the housing of the portable computer, thus making the user feel uncomfortable.